The Niger Delta Development Commission on Wednesday urged Communities in Edo State to own and protect projects sited in the communities by the commission.
Edo State Office Director of the NDDC, Mercy Babawale, gave the charge in Benin at a one-day workshop themed, ‘Capacity Building Programme for Stakeholders Across the Niger Delta Region on Community Ownership and Protection of NDDC Projects’.
Babawale, who said the core mandate of the NDDC is to ensure the Niger Delta region is developed, noted that the workshop was initiated to create awareness and to interact with communities in order to know what is happening in their various areas.
She said, “Most often, people in communities where our projects are sited feel they are government projects, so they have no business with them, it shouldn’t be so. We should take charge and protect projects sited in our communities. We should ensure that we don’t have vandals vandalising; we should ensure that we don’t have people coming to undo what has been done to us because these are benefits in our communities.
“The irony is that if we don’t protect these projects sited in our communities because we feel they belong to the government, we lose, while other people who take care of such projects benefit and have sustained projects in their communities.”
While charging stakeholders to ask questions anytime they suspect foul play in projects executed in their communities, she noted that the Commission doesn’t execute any project without reaching out to the people and knowing their needs in the community.
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